The former E.C. Electroplating, Inc. site was demolished by the EPA in October, but toxic chromium stored at the facility has been seeping into groundwater for decades, raising public health concerns.
(Photo by S.P. Sullivan/NJ.com)

"I don't know if anyone's been exposed. But people have potentially been exposed for quite a while."

GARFIELD — The federal Environmental Protection Agency will begin work in the coming weeks to determine how far a pool of cancer-causing chromium that sits beneath a Superfund site in a residential neighborhood has spread.

At the same time, a team of researchers from NYU's School of Medicine is hoping to begin work educating residents on the impacts of the contamination on public health, and testing their toenails for traces of the metal.

It turns out our toenails keep better records than government agencies sometimes.

"The good thing about toenails is that they grow very slowly — even in comparison to fingernails," says Judith Zelikoff, the community outreach director for the school's Department of Environmental Medicine. That makes them preferable to blood samples, which are better for monitoring acute exposure, or hair, which can get muddled up with shampoos and cosmetics. "Toe nail clippings will really monitor long-term, chronic exposure for anywhere from several months up to 18 months, so that's a good thing."

Zelikoff and her team are hoping to provide answers for residents who live near the former E.C. Electroplating Inc. site in the southwest corner of the city, which the EPA demolished in October.

"There are many homes in the groundwater plume area that have hexavalent chromium contamination in their basement, in their basement walls," Zelikoff said. "But just because you have that contamination does not mean you've had human exposure."

A DECADES-OLD SPILL

The former E.C. Electroplating Inc. site is an acre plot located at 125 Clark St. in a mixed residential and commercial area, not far from the Passaic River. Houses abut the property, which is located about a block from the Garfield Elementary School #7. From the 1930s until 2009, the facility was in the business of electroplating — a process in which electric currents are used to coat equipment with a thin layer of metal in order to prevent corrosion.

A photo taken by the EPA shows the presence of chromium dust in a residential basement. EPA

Massive tanks of chromic acid, also known as chromium 6 or hexavalent chromium, sat beneath the plant, and in 1983 a partially buried storage tank ruptured, releasing something like 3,640 gallons of the stuff into the ground. The company notified the city and the state Department of Environmental Protection, establishing a "recovery well" to pull in contaminated groundwater. However, according to EPA documents, that well was shut down within a year with less than a third of the estimated contaminants having been recovered.

Chromium, a substance made infamous by the work of activist Erin Brockovich, is water-soluble, and the groundwater near the site flows westward toward the Passaic. The EPA is monitoring how far the chromium has gotten in the decades since, and there is concern that the spill may have seeped beneath the river, into the neighboring city of Passaic.

In Garfield alone, more than 600 homes and buildings sit within the "plume," the EPA-designated area of concern. As many as 3,700 residents could be affected.

When chromium seeps into groundwater, flooding during storms can deliver the metal into basements, leaving behind a bright yellow dust that's harmful if inhaled or swallowed. That dust would turn up in E.C. Electroplating's basement and, later, in the basements of nearby homes.

The facility was declared a federal Superfund site in 2011, and an investigation done by The Record newspaper that year found the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection had been asleep at the switch through the years, ignoring signs of spreading. Since then, federal EPA and local officials have faced tough questions from residents turning up at public meetings on the cleanup, answering for the decades that passed while the chromium seeped further and further into the groundwater.

"There's no information," said Miguel Reyes, a member of the community group URGENT Garfield that's turned up at public events to protest the government's handling of the site. "People need to be held accountable. Nobody's putting the blame on anybody, and we need to investigate if the city fumbled the football."

A PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERN

If given the green light, NYU would first hold a series of town halls and focus groups, distributing literature on the health risks of chromium — ranging from cancer to kidney and liver damage — and consent forms in English and Spanish to take part in the study.

Volunteers would receive a kit with toenail clippers, nail polish remover, alcohol, cotton balls and instructions for collecting toenail specimens, which will be given to researchers to test for the presence of metals.

They'll have to be careful in selecting their test subjects, Zelikoff says: They want people who live within the plume area (though there will be a control group from outside), and they want to avoid smokers or those regularly exposed to second-hand smoke, which can cause elevated levels of chromium in the body. Diabetics also raise concern because blood-flow issues often require a physician to clip their toenails.

Then there's the issue of the kind of chromium you've got inside you.

While hexavalent chromium is a known irritant and carcinogen, chromium 3, also known as trivalent chromium, is a harmless form of the metal often used as a dietary supplement. It can also show up in those who have hip or knee replacements, or even those who eat a lot of broccoli. In detection, it can be difficult to sort out the good chromium from the bad.

"Toenail clippings, or even hair or blood, will only measure total chromium," Zelikoff said. "It's not specific for hexavalent chromium."

Subjects who are found to have elevated levels of chromium will be notified by the research team, and Zelikoff says they have clinicians lined up to offer medical advice. Blood tests will determine if the exposure is acute enough to present a serious risk.

"I don't know if anyone's been exposed," she said. "But people have potentially been exposed for quite a while."

The project is awaiting the approval of one of the school's institutional review boards, but Zelikoff and her team have been talking with officials and community leaders since late 2012 to outline a plan of attack, and local officials have signed a partnership agreement between the city and the school.

Tom Duch, Garfield's city manager, said that as the EPA has worked to remediate the site, residents have raised concerns about what the presence of the contaminants over the years means for their own health — questions city officials aren't qualified to answer.

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"From a local level, we don't have that expertise," he said. "So we have to depend on the New Jersey Department of Public Health and the federal resources that are out there. But because NYU is not related to anyone, they can give us a real unbiased view with real test results."

The issue has been looked at before: In 2010, a public health advisory from the federal Department of Health and Human Services [PDF] warned that while exposure was not a concern at School #7, the presence of chromium dust in "limited-use" residential basements presented a "public health hazard."

"Until a permanent groundwater contamination solution is in place, the U.S. EPA should continue with actions to prevent hexavalent-chromium contaminated groundwater from entering any and all residences within the groundwater plume," they wrote.

The following year, however, the agency performed an analysis of the incidences of cancer within the plume area. It found "the incidences of cancer types potentially related to hexavalent chromium exposure were not statistically different from the expected numbers of cases."

Still, the authors of the resulting public health consultation [PDF] advised that the study may have been done too quickly after the beginning of exposure to detect the presence of cancers caused by chromium. They recommended "continuing surveillance of chromium-related cancers in the population."

The results were reassuring, but not definitive, and the specter of exposure still looms over the city.

"Typically, at the public hearings that we've had, we've had two or three different family members get up and say, 'Hey, someone in our family died from cancer, and we don't know if it's related to this or not,'" he said. "And hopefully with their expertise, they'll be able to test and make a recommendation."

This EPA image shows demolition at the Garfield Superfund site during the fall of 2012.EPA

EPA MONITORS SPREAD

Since taking over the site, the EPA has remediated 13 homes in the plume area where chromium dust turned up in basements. They're still working to identify homes where folks could be at risk, says Pat Seppi, the EPA's community involvement coordinator.

"We've been able to contact most of the people, but sometimes in a community where there's a lot of rentals, we're not always able to contact the people that we want to or get to the owners," Seppi said. "So that's still a push that we're working on."

The plant itself was demolished back in October, the vacant lot now fenced off at the sidewalk.

At public meetings last year, parents of School #7 students expressed concerns that the demolition would shake loose harmful dust and debris, sending it into the air. But EPA officials say sensors saw no demonstrable changes in air quality, and much of the ground capped by layers of concrete and asphalt from the old facility.

The chief concern is not so much what's at the site, which is being tightly controlled; it's where all that chromium's gotten into beneath it.

In the coming weeks, the agency will conduct a "comprehensive soil investigation to figure out exactly where the contamination is within the site proper, so we know exactly what we have to do in terms of excavating the source material," said Don Graham, the on-site coordinator for the demolition project.

Teams are boring into the soil around the site, down to the water table, to determine the concentration of chromium beneath the plant.

"Based on those concentrations, that would dictate how far we dig to get the material that needs to be removed," he said.